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Updated: June 25, 2025
The Quadrumana or monkey tribe form one of the most characteristic features of this region. Twenty-four distinct species are known to inhabit it, and these are distributed with tolerable uniformity over the islands, nine being found in Java, ten in the Malay peninsula, eleven in Sumatra, and thirteen in Borneo.
Intermediate links between the Bimana and the Quadrumana are lacking altogether; so that, put the genealogy of the brutes upon what footing you will, the four-handed races will not serve for our forerunners; at least, not until some monkey, live or fossil, is producible with great toes, instead of thumbs, upon his nether extremities; or until some lucky geologist turns up the bones of his ancestor and prototype in France or England, who was so busy "napping the chuckie-stanes" and chipping out flint knives and arrow-heads in the time of the drift, very many ages ago, before the British Channel existed, says Lyell , and until these men of the olden time are shown to have worn their great-toes in a divergent and thumb-like fashion.
The two great families of quadrumana, cebidae and simiadae, are a noted instance, the one being exclusively American, while the other belongs entirely to the old world. There are many other cases in which the full circular group can only be completed by taking subdivisions from various continents.
The semi-human progenitors of man, like their allies the Quadrumana, will almost certainly have been thus modified; and, as savages still fight for the possession of their women, a similar process of selection has probably gone on in a greater or less degree to the present day.
Position of man in the animal series The natural system genealogical Adaptive characters of slight value Various small points of resemblance between man and the Quadrumana Rank of man in the natural system Birthplace and antiquity of man Absence of fossil connecting links Lower stages in the genealogy of man, as inferred, firstly from his affinities and secondly from his structure Early androgynous condition of the Vertebrata Conclusion.
The greater number of naturalists who have taken into consideration the whole structure of man, including his mental faculties, have followed Blumenbach and Cuvier, and have placed man in a separate Order, under the title of the Bimana, and therefore on an equality with the orders of the Quadrumana, Carnivora, etc.
The quadrumana gave no sign of existence, and it might have been supposed that they had disappeared; but what seemed more probable was that, terrified by the death of one of their companions, and frightened by the noise of the firearms, they had retreated to the back part of the house or probably even into the store-room.
"At first sight, the termination of the hind-limb of the Gorilla looks very hand-like, and as it is still more so in the lower apes, it is not wonderful that the appellation 'Quadrumana, or four-handed creatures, adopted from the older anatomists by Blumenbach, and unfortunately rendered current by Cuvier, should have gained such wide acceptance as a name for the ape order.
Now it is a curious fact, that the existence of such a land has been already thought necessary, to account for the distribution of the curious Quadrumana forming the family of the Lemurs. These have their metropolis in Madagascar, but are found also in Africa, in Ceylon, in the peninsula of India, and in the Malay Archipelago as far as Celebes, which is its furthest eastern limit. Dr.
Its canine teeth alone differ from ours: they are more prominent even than those of the quadrumana; and this is the case with all the members of the order, in whom we find them sometimes developed into actual daggers. But those of them which are purely carnivorous have molars peculiar to themselves.
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